SD card write protected and I've tried I think everything

I posted under a sticky...but thought it might be the wrong spot. I am trying to save about 7gigs of family reunion pics.
Have Canon 6D, used a Lexar Pro 1000x 16gb card while in Florida this past week. Shot pics, reviewed them on camera...looked great. Drive home to VB, turn on camera..Bamm..Cannot read card.
Have downloaded most of the links here, have tried the tape on the write lock slot on side of card....nada.
Windows says the directory name is invalid.
I have gotten it to come up and say the card needs to be formatted.
Tried that with windows and SDformatter. No luck. Says it cannot format.
Have gone through CMD to release or clear the write protect and in DOS it says its clear....But try it in windows and it says still write protected.
Run everything as Administrator...No luck.
Tried ZAR-X, Rescue Pro, DDR Memory Card Recovery etc.
Just cant get past the write protect issue to try anything else.
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
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First of all stay away from any attempts to format the card if you hope to recover the images. Doing so with some of the online utilities would likely just complicate recovery.

Is the slide switch for locking still present and is it in the position where the switch is toward the edge with the corner notch?

To what extent are you familiar with the Windows command structure and the Windows registry? If you feel comfortable with using Windows commands (and maybe a registry hack) then I would try some of the steps outlined at http://techlogitic.net …-protection-from-sd-card/.

Appreciate the response John. I have tried the registry hack, the switch is in the right spot. Brother -in law working on it now. Will advise what method he used if it works.

There was a case a few weeks ago with a CF card and I advised the OP to insert the card into a reader that allowed most of the card to stick out, then squeeze the sides of the card. Like you he had tried numerous methods without success but squeezing enabled him to get communication to the card and retrieve his images. Maybe something like that would work with the SD card.

it is definitely worth a shot! Will let you know.

Check the lock slide again. In many readers and cameras, it only takes the slightest bit of movement of that lock to register as "locked." Glue the sucker into place.

Is the card still readable when in camera ? If so then this would lead me to think this is Windows/PC problem and not necessarily the card.

I have had issues in the past with Windows 8.1 and 10 where the Card cannot be read using the built card read slot, kept getting error message saying card was write protected and similar - my solution was to go to Windows Control Panel > Device Manager and Remove the Card Reader driver then reboot the computer. Windows should automatically re-install the driver when it reboots. Another time with similar problem but on a different PC the solution was to update the Card Reader driver software by downloading an update from the PC manufacturers website.

If the card has failed which I have also experienced then it will be difficult to find a good recovery program that will be able to restore 100% of the data, it all depends on the actual cause and degree of failure.

Hope the suggested driver update solution(s) resolve your issue.

Hmmm, we haven't heard from the OP in 3 weeks so perhaps issue has been resolved. Update???????

Without more info, it is hard to debug this. But I can offer one more explanation here. Write Protect mode is one of the operation state of the FW by design. This usually kicks in in two ways:

1) when multiple internal errors occur back to back. FW in today's memory card do handle quite a bit of internal errors, but when they occur in a back to back fashion, card will go into write protect.

2) when enough "sectors", or more precisely called blocks in the flash because bad (unusable) such that the remaining good blocks don't make up for the capacity of the card. For example, a 32GB card actually has 32GB+delta capacity, the size of "delta" is usually 2-3% of the capacity. The "delta" can become bad and unusable, the card will still function. If more than "delta" becomes bad, the card will go into write protect.

Now, why they design it that way. It is a legacy way of implementing memory card's FW. The thinking was if 1) or 2) happens, the flash memory in the card is degraded enough that further wrote will likely to result in data lost. So instead of letting users ontinue to use the card with high chance of data lost, they just made it write protect, so no more further write can be done to the card. The existing data should still be able to be read, and you should back up that data asap.

eelnoraa wrote in post #18265834
Without more info, it is hard to debug this. But I can offer one more explanation here. Write Protect mode is one of the operation state of the FW by design. This usually kicks in in two ways:

1) when multiple internal errors occur back to back. FW in today's memory card do handle quite a bit of internal errors, but when they occur in a back to back fashion, card will go into write protect.

2) when enough "sectors", or more precisely called blocks in the flash because bad (unusable) such that the remaining good blocks don't make up for the capacity of the card. For example, a 32GB card actually has 32GB+delta capacity, the size of "delta" is usually 2-3% of the capacity. The "delta" can become bad and unusable, the card will still function. If more than "delta" becomes bad, the card will go into write protect.

Now, why they design it that way. It is a legacy way of implementing memory card's FW. The thinking was if 1) or 2) happens, the flash memory in the card is degraded enough that further wrote will likely to result in data lost. So instead of letting users ontinue to use the card with high chance of data lost, they just made it write protect, so no more further write can be done to the card. The existing data should still be able to be read, and you should back up that data asap.

But if this was the OP issue it doesn't explain why they having problems reading the data - surely in Write Protect mode the card can still be read ? In my experience with faulty memory cards Windows doesn't detect the card is faulty and it knows there is a card there so it automatically assumes the card either needs formatting or is write protected but it is still unable to read data of the card...

eelnoraa wrote in post #18265834
Without more info, it is hard to debug this. But I can offer one more explanation here. Write Protect mode is one of the operation state of the FW by design. This usually kicks in in two ways:

1) when multiple internal errors occur back to back. FW in today's memory card do handle quite a bit of internal errors, but when they occur in a back to back fashion, card will go into write protect.

2) when enough "sectors", or more precisely called blocks in the flash because bad (unusable) such that the remaining good blocks don't make up for the capacity of the card. For example, a 32GB card actually has 32GB+delta capacity, the size of "delta" is usually 2-3% of the capacity. The "delta" can become bad and unusable, the card will still function. If more than "delta" becomes bad, the card will go into write protect.

Now, why they design it that way. It is a legacy way of implementing memory card's FW. The thinking was if 1) or 2) happens, the flash memory in the card is degraded enough that further wrote will likely to result in data lost. So instead of letting users ontinue to use the card with high chance of data lost, they just made it write protect, so no more further write can be done to the card. The existing data should still be able to be read, and you should back up that data asap.

First of all we haven't heard from the OP since January 2nd.

Would not the registry modification steps shown in the link I previously provided do a software "unlock" (for lack of a better word) of the card?

John from PA wrote in post #18230064
To what extent are you familiar with the Windows command structure and the Windows registry? If you feel comfortable with using Windows commands (and maybe a registry hack) then I would try some of the steps outlined at http://techlogitic.net …-protection-from-sd-card/

John from PA wrote in post #18265955
First of all we haven't heard from the OP since January 2nd.

Would not the registry modification steps shown in the link I previously provided do a software "unlock" (for lack of a better word) of the card?

Understood, just trying to offer another possibility from my experience.

The registry modification may work for other reasons, but what I described above are two reasons that can't be change by window register because the write protect is not enforced by windows. It is enforced by firmware of the memory card. Even all the manufacturing diagnostic tools, it is not possible to lift the write protect without a FW re-flash. This basically telling the FW it is a start over like when the card comes out from manufacture. These two type of errors are usually rare on CF and higher end SD card (with tighter manufacturing screening), but with lower end SD or USB drive, this is actually quite often, by that I mean in the 0.5-1% range

If you have tried all above solution and still the problem is not resolved then do visit http://techalgorithm.c​om …-micro-sd-card-using-cmd/ ,My write protection on sandisk micro sd card has been resolved using this technique, You people can also try this..